\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t An Argentine microsatellite that traveled into space as part of the United States\u2019 Moon exploration mission Artemis II established communication 70,000 kilometers away from Earth, marking a national record.<\/p>\n
Microsatellite ATENEA, developed by Argentine public institutions and a national private company, entered the Moon\u2019s orbit and successfully made contact with stations in C\u00f3rdoba and Tierra del Fuego on Thursday.<\/p>\n
This means it has reached \u201cthe largest distance from which an Argentine space mission has transmitted data till now,\u201d said the National Space Activities Commission (CONAE, by its Spanish initials) in an X post.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis milestone confirms the robustness of our technology and the country\u2019s ability to innovate, explore, and overcome new challenges in space,\u201d CONAE said. \u201cEvery step forward brings us closer to more ambitious missions and strengthens the growth of the national aerospace sector.\u201d<\/p>\n
ATENEA made its first contact with the Argentine stations minutes before 2 a.m. (Argentina time) on Thursday, around six hours after Artemis II took off.<\/p>\n
At 9 a.m., it reached its highest connection point at over 70,000 kilometers from Earth, \u201cconfirming the complete success of the operation,\u201d said innovation, science and technology secretary Dar\u00edo Genua in an X post.<\/p>\n
Argentine science in NASA\u2019s Moon mission Artemis II, a mission led by the United States\u2019 space agency NASA, launched on Wednesday with the goal of taking a human crew to the Moon\u2019s orbit for the first time in over 50 years.<\/p>\n
Argentina\u2019s ATENEA is one of four satellites that were launched inside the Artemis II spaceship to be released into space. They were included as what is known as \u201csecondary playloads,\u201d projects which are unrelated to the main mission but that are allowed to take up the available slots in order to reach space.<\/p>\n
The Argentine development was accompanied by fellow CubeSat satellites from South Korea, Germany and Saudi Arabia. The South Korean and the German satellites were not able to successfully make contact with Earth after being released.<\/p>\n
ATENEA, a 12U CubeSat microsatellite, was designed with the goal of training space engineers and scientists and testing technology in an environment Argentina has never reached before.<\/p>\n
Marcamos un nuevo r\u00e9cord \ud83d\ude80\ud83c\udde6\ud83c\uddf7<\/p>\n
El microsat\u00e9lite ATENEA logr\u00f3 establecer comunicaci\u00f3n a 70.000 kil\u00f3metros de la Tierra, alcanzando la mayor distancia desde la que una misi\u00f3n espacial argentina haya transmitido datos hasta hoy.<\/p>\n
Este hito confirma la solidez de nuestra tecnolog\u00eda y\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/zYeJa372Id<\/p>\n
\u2014 CONAE (@CONAE_Oficial) April 3, 2026 The mission\u2019s objectives also include the development of low-cost satellite missions and international cooperation.<\/p>\n
Now, from space, ATENEA will carry out survey, testing and validation tasks related to space radiation, silicon photomultipliers (a type of light detector), GPS data, and long-range communication links for future deep-space exploration programs.<\/p>\n
The institutions that participated in the development and design of the microsatellite include three public universities: National University of La Plata \u2014 which was behind most of ATENEA\u2019s design and systems \u2014 National University of San Mart\u00edn, and University of Buenos Aires\u2019 Faculty of Engineering.<\/p>\n
Other participants are the Argentine Institute of Radio Astronomy (IAR), the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA), and Argentine private company VENG, all under the coordination of the CONAE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An Argentine microsatellite that traveled into space as part of the United States\u2019 Moon exploration mission Artemis II established communication 70,000 kilometers away from Earth, marking a national record. Microsatellite ATENEA, developed by Argentine public institutions and a national private company, entered the Moon\u2019s orbit and successfully made contact with stations in C\u00f3rdoba and Tierra […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":49079,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8524,12993,1068,4491],"tags":[8520,12992,8522,4489],"class_list":["post-49078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artemis-ii-moon-mission","category-conae","category-nasa","category-science-innovation","tag-artemis-ii-moon-mission","tag-conae","tag-nasa","tag-science-innovation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}